Real Confidence Alyssa Dver

To hug or not to hug? That is the question for a lot of people. Recently I was thinking about the later days of the pandemic, going to a couple of conferences when we were still wearing masks and sitting six feet apart. The conference organizers offered two versions of the badge lanyards to signal whether you were comfortable shaking hands or not.

At the time I was like, oh, what a bummer that this is what we have to declare but in hindsight I think it was probably a big relief for people who, as a rule, don’t like that physical contact and wish they could walk around always with a little sign that says, “Please don’t touch me.”

Personally, I’m a hugger. To me, hugs are more than just squeezes; they're like little happiness boosters with a dash of oxytocin. But let's not kid ourselves, hugging ain't always a walk in the park for everyone.

With cultural quirks and personal preferences in the mix, figuring out when to go in for the hug can be a bit of a head-scratcher.  Whichever side of the hug you’re on, you don’t want to offend, right?

In this episode of Real Confidence I’m sharing some tips on how to read the room, pick up on subtle cues from the person in front of you to determine if you’re going to go for it or opt for a cozy, two-handed handshake instead.

The bottom line? Let’s be more mindful of one another’s physical comfort zone and share that confidence through some good old-fashioned kindness.

Listen in to hear more about how to confidently navigate the hug highway and foster human connection!

Ever wonder which episode or season you’d make it to if you were a character in The Walking Dead? How you’d protect yourself, find shelter, get food? Whom you could trust? What about whether you could trust yourself to do the right thing if your life were under threat or your loyalties were tested?

These questions aren’t just fun party conversation starters – they’re actually a sneaky way to get a handle on how self-reliant you are, and in turn, how confident you feel about taking care of yourself and your loved ones in an actual state of emergency.

Topics like emergency preparedness, self-defense, and home safety and security bring up fear for a lot of people. There’s the Fear with a capital F around the need for these things becoming reality, but also the fear that we won’t know what to do or how to do it if someone isn’t there to help or guide us.

The more self-reliant we are, the more confidence we can have that we have the skills, tools or abilities we need to manage these kinds of serious situations. That doesn’t guarantee a good outcome of course, but the alternative – keeping our heads in the sand – almost promises that things won’t go as well as they could.

Enter John Brewer, my guest on this episode of Real Confidence. John spent 10+ years in Army Special Forces defending his country, his family and his life. Our conversation about the relationship between self-reliance and confidence was riveting. It doesn’t matter if you’re avoiding learning how to program a new remote control or putting go-bags together in case weather events force you to evacuate your home – this episode has something for everyone.

Highlights from our conversation include: 


How self-reliance and teamwork fit together
The cost of not being more self-reliant
How it’s our belief that something is beyond our learning grasp that makes it so
Why foundational – not expert – knowledge is enough to build self-trust and reliance
The three levels of confidence that are always at play at work or at home, whether you’re a leader or contributor to the team

John Brewer is the author of Fight For Your Best Life: The Step-By-Step Self-defense Guide to Personal Empowerment, Protecting Your Loved Ones, and Living Fearless and the founder of Mind, Shield and Spear Consulting group, an organization focused on delivering not just the physical techniques, but also the mental strategies to navigate challenging situations with confidence. Learn more about John at mindshieldandspear.com.

Listen, life is A LOT and has been for the last four years. I’ll be the first one to tell you that what we lived through changed not how we lived, but how we experienced our lives. We’re not going back to before. We’ve got to live where we are NOW. 

And where we are now is emotionally exhausted. The question is why? Are we truly burned out or are we just bored? And how do we know the difference?

One of the problems I see is that (once again), when the way we feel is validated by the media and everyone around us, we’re compelled to label it as a syndrome. 

Yes, it helps to know we’re not alone in what we’re feeling or dealing with but giving it a “diagnosis” like that makes it way too easy to put the blame outside ourselves. 

So I’m going to ask again: are we truly burned out or are we just bored? 

This is top of mind for me because I am craving sleep like it’s my job. It’s not a health issue (I had my doctor look into it) and what I discovered when I got curious about this sleepy malaise might surprise you. 

In this episode, I get into that and share my own personal process for identifying what’s draining, exhausting or otherwise sapping my life energy. Listen in to hear what I learned and see if you’re up for a little challenge of your own. 

The human brain is a marvelous thing. All day long it’s tasked with protecting us from anything it perceives as a threat, and it takes that job seriously. 

So seriously, in fact, that it actually can’t discern the difference between real, life-threatening situations and getting a vague, last-minute meeting request from our boss. 

Whatever the danger, our brains sound the alarm bell, stress hormones begin to flood our system and our amygdalas – that primitive part of our brain – go into overdrive. 

We fight, we flee, we freeze or we fawn, all in the name of creating safety and security. 

With biology at play like that, is it possible to be confident in a crisis? 

The answer is yes, but it’s more accurate to say we can learn how to be MORE confident in a crisis. 

My guest on this episode of Real Confidence knows firsthand from her time in AmeriCorps what it’s like to live in a war zone and how we experience threats to our lives and threats to our status, income or relationships in pretty much the same way. 

She also has some excellent strategies for how to come back to center and anchor our perception in reality so we can operate from a calmer, cooler place when a crisis (real or perceived) hits. 

Takeaways from our conversation include:


Why it’s easier for men to compartmentalize than it is for women
How to prevent a full-on amygdala hijacking when you feel it starting up
The role curiosity can play in teaching your brain what it is and isn’t a crisis
Just how much choice we all really have when in a moment of crisis

Kristine Scott developed her conflict response and training skills over years directing meal programs for the house insecure. Her monthly training sessions soon started drawing people from all over, leading her to found Seattle Conflict Resolution. Kristine is now a nationally recognized trainer and internationally lauded speaker on conflict management. Her mission is to help people bring their best selves into hard situations. You can learn more about Kristine at seattleconflictresolution.com.

A lot of people ask me what the opposite of confidence is. On some level I think they already know the answer isn’t insecurity or a lack of self-esteem otherwise why ask the question. 

And they’re right. The opposite of confidence is neither of those things. 

It’s guilt. 

Guilt is quite a tool. Most often we think of it as a tool other people use against us. My mother likes to say, “I didn’t know your phone was broken,” to guilt me into calling more often. 

In those situations, when someone’s bullying us, guilt can feel bad, stir up feelings of shame or worthlessness. And I have some things to say about that, too. 

But sometimes guilt can be good. I don’t mean that it makes us feel good, but that it’s a sign that we’ve violated our own values, needs and wants.

When we can recognize that, then we also recognize that just like confidence, guilt is a choice. We can wallow in it, or we can use it to address what we did – or didn’t do – and come back to what’s most important to us and then act from THAT place. 

Listen in to learn how to spot the different flavors of guilt and what you can do when you feel the weight of it pulling you down, so that the next time it shows up you can rise up confidently to face it.

Any St. Jerome fans here? Saint who, you’re probably thinking but you may be familiar with some famous words of his: 

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best. 

But living inside a culture obsessed with overnight success and a social media landscape that lures us into the self-comparison trap, many of us stop before we even start, well, anything new or different. 

It’s like if we aren’t already The Best, why bother trying, right? And yet there are some people who seem to have cracked the code. By all appearances it looks like mastery – being the best – comes easy to them. 

Not exactly true.

My guest on this episode of Real Confidence has won awards, received accolades and set records that would cause anyone’s jaw to drop. And more interesting still, you wouldn’t think that filmmaking, scuba diving or racing in a Veladrome are connected in any way.

But they are. 

So, if you’ve been holding yourself back from pursuing your real passion, changing careers or exploring a different way of being in the world, you’re going to want to listen to the conversation Jeff Seckendorf and I had about what it takes to be your best. 

Highlights include:


Why settling for quick success is like eating empty calories
How your past informs not just your present, but your confidence to create your future
The incredible concept of overlap and how it allows failure to be okay; and
The magical paradox of being risky in a conservative way and what that has to do with success

Jeff Seckendorf is a life-long adventurer, filmmaker, and educator – flight instructor, scuba instructor trainer, mentor to scores of up and coming film directors, and instructor for hundreds of film workshops. Learn more about Jeff at jeffreyseckendorf.com.